by B.T. Lowry
The next morning, Pradah brought out a bundle of wires which Farmer had sent to him. He plugged them into a frayed cable snaking under the sheet metal walls of his hut, then lay on his mattress. The wires looked like fragments of an electronic toy, but they comprised a device more sophisticated than anything available on the city's market. The visors people wore here had aural and visual feeds, but the capacities of this device went well beyond that.
Silently, Pradah uttered a prayer to the Creator. Protect us. Forgive me if I hurt anyone innocent. Help me free my people from those who claim to know you.
He heard no response, save a warmth within his heart. Heyo claimed that he could break through the city's interference and reconnect to something higher, but Pradah didn't experience that. He knew that he should just sit and listen, that the Creator dwelled within him and he need only pay attention. But this place was too distracting.
Let me save Heyo first, then I'll learn from him how to meditate.
He coughed to clear his lungs, untangled the wires. He fixed connections to his ears, hands, nose and eyes. They stuck as though he were magnetic. He subvocalized a command then all at once he heard nothing, smelled nothing, saw only darkness. He spoke Mahar’s code, then Farmer’s code, then waited for them to arrive.
Farmer came first, a wiry young man with light hair and a goofy straw hat. He appeared between rows of corn stalks, their long, slender leaves drooping. Though the whole scene was synthetic, the scents of sunlight on leaves and moist soil still brought relief from the city's caustic fumes. Farmer could have made any environment, but the man had an affinity for corn. As he approached, Pradah smelled working man's sweat. Farmer’s movements were realistic, but as a warrior Pradah knew body language. He recognized the figure as a proxy.
“Ready,” said Farmer in a cheery voice, a grin shifting the brown stubble on his face. He always sounded cheerful; his proxy was programmed that way.
Mahar appeared next to Farmer with a shimmer. He looked as he did normally, dressed in work clothes. The smell of frying oil arrived with him. It mixed with the soil, sun and leaves; his son must be cooking in their hut. Mahar stood straight, but kept his gaze lowered.
Farmer provided the tech, but refused to use it offensively. Pradah found it strange enough to be out of his own head and standing in this corn field; flying over the city would be too disorienting. So Mahar had trained to use the flyer.
“When do I fly?” he asked, his voice carefully monotone. He’d been clear: he didn’t agree with this course of action but he'd not shirk his duty.
Farmer moved his hands in tight spirals until a dark globe appeared between his palms. He pushed it down onto Mahar’s head, where it looked like a water droplet on an ant. Farmer moved his hands in zigzag lines. A second dark bubble appeared between them. He pushed it down over Pradah's head.
Abruptly, the chapel interior filled Pradah's senses. Stale air, mildew and dust. Pillars of dusty light through stained-glass windows. His booted feet didn't compress the marred red carpet leading to the altar but hovered above it. He could not touch anything here and no one could see or hear him, yet he could sense everything as though he were physically present. All input and no output, as Farmer said.
It felt cowardly to be staging a strike from bed. At least Pradah would witness the destruction with all his senses, confront what he was actually doing. He wouldn’t become like the leaders of this city, waging war through servants and technology while pretending to be clean of all guilt.
He looked to the altar, where Heyo and Mata stood.
Damn.
"Heyo’s here,” he said.
Heyo lit a candle on the altar table. Mata picked up a book. Pradah glared at her, then searched the corners of the masonry until a hole appeared in his perception: the location of the sensory feed. It had been easy to install, as Mata kept almost no security. Light shone through the stained glass in shafts and fell on pews, where a few Raiyans sat. Some looked rapt in prayer while others had fallen asleep.
“I’m in, Chief,” came Mahar's voice. A moment later, his lean form appeared in the top right of Pradah's vision. With the shiny black bubble on his head, he looked like a thin man transforming into an insect head first. “Heyo's there? Should we go through with it?”
“He's busy at the altar," said Pradah. “There are other people but they're in their seats. Take out the wall in the rear, there's no one there. We’ll just frighten them.”
Heyo wouldn't be hurt. The flyer had precise aim, so only the rear of the chapel should go down. It would be a warning. Everyone would be safe, but their misplaced faith would be shaken.
Mata made Heyo read aloud from the book she held. Surely they'd still be occupied when the flyer struck.
“Chief?" Mahar said. "I’ll fly but I won’t pull the trigger.”
He sounded as though he’d made up his mind.
Pradah didn't try to convince him otherwise, not in the middle of an operation. Perhaps Mahar would never come on another mission and Pradah would wage this war alone.
Pradah looked at Heyo. He might get hurt in the destruction. When the big blocks fell... Maybe Gayant was right... No. Heyo would do better to lose his life than his heart.
Pradah felt too hot. The world was too close, the pillars around him too solid. He waited while somewhere overhead, the armed flying machine convinced the city’s sensors that it was a pigeon. In the corner of Pradah's vision, Mahar's figure stared into space and held his arms out like a bird, operating the flyer's wings.
“I’m in place,” he said after a few minutes.
“Give me the trigger,” said Pradah.
Somewhere in the simulation’s background, Farmer arranged for a red button to appear in front of Pradah as though hovering in the air. Pradah's heart hitched and he coughed. He looked at his younger brother. His hand jerked away from the trigger. Heyo took the book from Mata and began reading louder, facing upward to the colored light streaming in through the windows. He looked as he had in Raiya, when he’d recited the Creator’s prayers for the villagers: beautiful and right.
“Pradah,” Mahar said sharply. “I can’t circle up here forever. It looks suspicious.”
Pradah stared at the red button floating before him. Would a warrior do this?
One shouldn't deliberate during a fight. He pushed the smooth surface and depressed the button with a click.
The walls around him crumbled, their binding broken on a microscopic level. Thin stone plating flaked off blocks as they fell, revealing black plastic beneath. Heyo jerked his head around while Mata held a delicious expression of shock.
Pradah yelled at her, though he knew she couldn’t hear, “Your God doesn't favor you after all!”
Sweet revenge after tolerating months and years of her people keeping the Raiyans like insects in a hole. He closed his eyes. A hawk circling overhead, the wind whistling through boulders, standing at his father's side. They faced a small army with spears, staffs and arrows. That had been an honest fight, not like this. Now he fought from his bed and attacked people in their place of worship.
What's become of me?
His head swum. There was no right path anymore. Everything was mixed.
A high voice called from under the rubble, “Help!”
For an instant it sounded like Heyo but no, Heyo was running down the aisle toward Pradah. He should be fleeing. This wasn't right.
"Fire again," said Mahar. The red button had turned yellow. "Finish the job."
“Wait!” yelled Pradah.
The next shot would strike the same place. Heyo would be killed. The young ayur seemed to look toward Pradah as he approached the rubble. Pradah flinched. Heyo turned away and knelt by a boy whose legs had been pinned under black blocks and shards of stone. The boy had a round face and skin darker than a Raiyan’s, but not so dark as an Ilunian’s. It had to be Mata’s boy, half Raiyan and half Ilunian. Half an enemy, but half family.
Farmer's cheerful voice broke in, “Strike again and destroy
the traces of the tech we used. They’ll track us otherwise."
Heyo lifted debris from the young boy's legs. As Pradah went to push the button his heart hitched and he coughed. He thought of their mother and it was as though she were there watching.
"Fire, damn it!" Farmer yelled cheerfully.
Prayer and Old Powers